220 State of the Arts of [April, 



Nepal, for all the Newar women, of the poorer classes, (and there are 

 scarcely any others now,) weave the cotton cloths required for the 

 consumption of themselves and families. 



These fabrics of domestic manufacture are all of cotton, and of the 

 coarsest and most inelegant description. The cotton is grown in 

 abundance throughout the hottest valleys of the Nipalese hills, and 

 in the Tara'i skirting their plainward face. It is brought on men's 

 shoulders*, as picked, with the seeds in it, to the different towns of 

 the valley, where it is exchanged to shop-keepers, for money, or other 

 produce, as the case may be ; and thus each family, as its means will 

 admit of, purchases, from time to time, so many pounds of the raw 

 material as suffices for the employment at the cleaning machine and 

 spinning wheel of the mother and her daughters. 



The cotton is separated from the seeds by the women, either with 

 the fingers, or by the help of a most primitive contrivance, of the fol- 

 lowing description, and called Keko. Two rollers of wood, the thick- 

 ness of a walking stick, and close together, are placed in an upright 

 frame, and made to revolve on one another by means of a handle 

 attached (through one side of the frame) to the lower of them. The 

 operator, sitting on the ground, places the frame between her feet, 

 steadying it with her toes, and applies small portions of cotton to the 

 spaces between the rollers with her left hand, while she plies the 

 revolving handle with the right : in this manner the cotton is drawn 

 between the rollers ; the seeds, being too large for the interspace, are 

 separated and left behind. 



The spinning is equally primitive, but its mode not easily describ- 

 ed. The machinef is small, and easily portable, even by a child of 

 six years old ; it is not raised from the ground by means of legs, as 

 is the domestic one of the Scottish Highlanders, and Northern Irish, 

 (the ones I am best acquainted with ;) nor is the wheel set in motion 

 by the pressure of the foot on a board connected by a thong of lea- 

 ther, with a lever or cramp fixed to its axle, as is common in turning 

 grind- stones, or turning lathe- wheels ; but, the spinner, as in the 

 cotton-cleaning process, sits on the ground, with one hand turning 



* Man is the only animal of burden employed in the valley of Nepal, as well 

 as the interior of her hills — a circumstance of itself strongly pointing out, how 

 short a way the inhabitants have advanced beyond sheer barbarism. The uneven 

 surface of their country is scarcely sufficient to save them from this imputation. 

 The rulers of the land drive English carriages, while the transport of every arti- 

 cle in their dominions is made on men and women's backs — a good specimen of 

 eastern pomp, associated with its common accompaniment, hard-worked poverty. 



t Called Ye&ti by the Newars. 



